Henderson Growing Into Her Superstardom

Jason Logan

Jason Logan

This year’s CP Women’s Open will look — and perhaps feel — quite a bit different from last year’s edition.

In 2018 the tournament went to Saskatchewan for the first time in its history — it was the first time either the women’s or men’s open was played in the prairie province in fact — with Regina’s Wascana CC the venue. It was an event that was highly anticipated by those in the Saskatchewan capital and surrounding area from the day Golf Canada announced the club as host. Pride burst from club members who filled the fairways as volunteers and from eager fans who flocked to the course in their Roughrider green. In the end, despite some cold, damp weather during tournament week and a tough winter that put the golf course — a fine track but by no means elite — behind the 8-ball in terms of conditioning, they were rewarded and elated when Canadian superstar Brooke Henderson penned the story everybody wanted to read.

“Thinking back I still get chills a little bit when I was walking up 18 and realizing that I had a three-shot lead and that all I had to do was not do anything stupid and I would be the champion and I would get to hoist this trophy that I’d dreamt about since I was really, really young,” said Henderson Tuesday at the media day for this year’s tournament. “That feeling of sinking that putt, having family and friends rush out, all the fans that cheered me on all week and all the support that I received was amazing.”

Henderson spoke those words from a dais inside Magna GC in Aurora, Ont., this year’s host. The exclusive haunt owned by Magna International, the behemoth auto parts manufacturer founded by billionaire Frank Stronach, is as opulent a club as there is in Canada. Its membership is rich, it’s Doug Carrick-designed golf course is pristine (if over-bunkered), and its suburban Toronto location is populous. It will not replicate the small-city, biggest-deal-in-town vibe that Wascana exuded, but it will be a treat for the tournament’s competitors — likely one of the best courses they’ll play all year — and for the fans who attend and may have longed for a look inside the private property. And it will also mark the first time the Women’s Open has been played in the Greater Toronto Area since 2001, when Annika Sorenstam emerged victorious at Angus Glen GC in nearby Markham.

“It’s time that we came back to the GTA,” said Lorie Kane, a four-time LPGA Tour winner and a veteran of 28 Canadian Women’s Opens. “It’s time for women’s golf to be elevated one more level in this country.”

Kane credited Henderson, just 21 and already a nine-time LPGA Tour winner (the most in history by a Canadian), for “changing the way people see women’s golf in our country,” and said that in addition to putting forth her own best effort on the golf course during the tournament, she feels a responsibility to take some of the pressure off Henderson’s shoulders when it comes to de facto host responsibilities.

“If we just allow her to do her thing,” Kane said of Henderson, “she will go out and do her thing.”

Henderson, as you likely know, has been doing her thing all year. She’s won twice in 14 official starts, is second on the LPGA Tour’s season-long points race, is second in scoring average, and is first in rounds in the 60s. She stands eighth in the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings but is largely viewed as one of the top two or three players in the world, given that ledger is largely skewed towards players who don’t play as much as Henderson does. Asked if she feels she is better this year than last, Henderson said that even if the stats and results suggest she’s on par with past seasons, she feels she is improved because she’s more comfortable and confident with her routine, schedule, course knowledge and stardom. It’s easy to forget that so much of Henderson’s success — including her only major title at the 2016 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship — came when she was still in her teens. To that end, she handled the media car wash that stars like her are subject to during preview days like Tuesday’s with veteran ease.

It’s also worth noting that both of Henderson’s wins this season have come at tournaments she’s won before — at the LOTTE Championship in Hawaii, where she defended, and at the Meijer LPGA Classic in Grand Rapids, Mich., which she won in 2017. She also won back-to-back Cambia Portland Classic titles in 2015 and ’16 — her first two LPGA Tour wins — and consecutive PGA Women’s Championships of Canada in 2014, ’15, the first of which coming when she was still an amateur. Unlike Hawaii, Grand Rapids and Portland, the CP Women’s Open is not played on the same golf course every year, but Henderson cited the embrace of the fans as the chief reason for her history of often playing well in the same cities. No doubt she’ll be feted at Magna too.

As always, the CP Women’s Open will draw a top-notch field. Early commitments for the August 22-25 event include 16 of the top-20 players in the world and it’s expected more than 90 of the world’s top 100 will compete. Those include past champions such as Sung Hyun Park, Ariya Jutanugarn, Lydia Ko and Cristie Kerr. Other stars locked in are Lexi Thompson, Nelly and Jessica Korda, Hannah Green, Danielle Kang and last year’s runner-up, Angel Yin.

Ticket sales are said to be going well, but marketing for the tournament around the Toronto area has been muted with the Toronto Raptors NBA Championship run and NHL free agency dominating sports news. Expect efforts on that front to ramp up with the tournament now eight weeks away, especially if organizers hope to come close to replicating the enthusiasm that shook through Wascana last summer.